Category: Islam

Hosay procession in St. James / Photo by Nicholas Laughlin, Creative Commons Hosay, a religious ritual performed by Trinidadian Muslims, combines the somber Islamic observance of Ashura, brought by immigrant Indians, and the joy of Trinidad’s famous carnival. By Ken Chitwood / 09.09.2018 PhD Candidate, Religion in the Americas, Global Islam University of Florida A throng of Trinidadians line up[…]

Hajj pilgrim at Masjid al-Haram, or Grand Mosque, Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 2003 The hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca required of all Muslims, is one of the largest and most meaningful movements of people in the world. Last year, more than two million of the devout from all over the world travelled to Saudi[…]

Examining the available evidence for the use of horses and armor for them in medieval Islam warfare, with particular reference to the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring regions. By Dr. David Nicolle / 06.30.2017 Visiting Research Fellow University of Nottingham Abstract The widely held view that horse armour was not used in the early Islamic Middle East is[…]

Quranic script from the 8th or 9th century. Courtesy Wikipedia Al-Farabi drew on a rich variety of Hellenic ideas, notably from Plato and Aristotle, adapting and extending them in order to respond to the flux of his times. By Rashmee Roshan Lall / 11.12.2018 You might not be familiar with the name Al-Farabi, a 10th-century thinker[…]

Ancient remains at Thula / Creative Commons Following conquest by the Umayyid caliphate, Islam rose fairly quickly. Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 11.16.2018 Public Historian Brewminate Editor-in-Chief The Rise of Yemen The wall and talus at barāqish / Creative commons Yemen is the state occupying the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Because of the extensive desert[…]

An Arab city of the early medieval period. Urban centers in the Middle East were of a size and wealth all but unknown in the Christian west during this period, encouraging the development of a large and diverse fraternity of criminals. In the medieval period, the Middle East was home to many of the world’s[…]

During the medieval period the Muslim community was rather tolerating and accepting in this regard. By Muzaffar Bhatti / 02.23.2017 Graduate Student in History Royal Holloway, University of London Contrary to popular belief, Islam has not always had a strained relationship with the LGBT community. In fact, during the medieval period the Muslim community was[…]

The Great Mosque of Córdoba turned church after the Reconquista / Photo by Berthold Werner, Wikimedia Commons Was it a beacon of enlightened sophistication snuffed out by barbaric Dark Age Europeans, or the arena of a clash of eastern and western civilizations? By Dr. Brian A. Catlos / 06.10.2018 Professor of Religious Studies University of Colorado at Boulder[…]

The Kaaba in Mecca / Photo by Moataz Egbaria, Wikimedia Commons Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 03.15.2018 Historian Brewminate Editor-in-Chief Introduction Islam Islamic art encompasses visual arts produced from the seventh century onwards by culturally Islamic populations. Islam is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion articulated by the Qur’an, a book considered by its adherents to be[…]

This 19th century Sudanese drawing of an amulet includes spells against the ‘evil eye’. Wellcome Library reference: MS Arabic 21. By Dr. Nikolai Serikoff / 11.11.2016 Asian Collections Librarian Wellcome Library An exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, ‘Power and Protection‘, [last year] was “the first major exhibition to explore the supernatural in the art of the Islamic[…]

Château de Coussac-Bonneval / Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Virginia H. Aksan / 01.14.2011 Professor Emeritus of History McMaster University Introduction Contained after 1700, the Ottoman threat to Europe evolved into an Austro-Russian-Ottoman struggle for hegemony over the remaining frontiers of the Danube, the Crimea and the Caucasus. The era from 1700 to 1900 is generally[…]

A conservator from the National Institute of Heritage, Tunis, and a member of conservation firm Arcanes restoring a painting for the exhibition The Awakening of a Nation, April 2016 Venue of a major exhibition on precolonial Tunisia, a historic palace in Tunis is now the site of a planned national museum. By Dr. Ridha Moumni[…]

Indonesian female Muslim students read books in a library. Dadang Tri/Reuters By Dr. Rachel Rinaldo / 06.06.2017 Assistant Professor of Sociology University of Colorado Recent terrorist attacks such as the one in London inevitably lead to coverage of Islamist ideology, Muslim culture and Muslim women’s rights. What is often missing, however, in my view is[…]

Great Mosque at Damascus (Photo: G. Lewis) Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 04.12.2017 Brewminate Editor-in-Chief A Beginner’s Guide Introduction to Islam By Dr. Elizabeth Macauley-Lewis Assistant Professor, Graduate Center of Liberal Studies City University of New York Origins and the life of Muhammad the Prophet Islam, Judaism and Christianity are three of the world’s[…]